Actuators for active vibration control - tunable resonant devices

This paper is concerned with the control of vibration using a smart structure. Such a structure requires actuators and sensors coupled with a controller, but only actuators are discussed here. Because the limiting factor in the active control of vibration is often the actuator, the work described in this paper discusses the use of resonant devices to generate the required secondary force. The control of such a device is much simpler than a fully active system as it simply involves tuning the device so that it operates most effectively at the unwanted disturbance frequency. A major issue is how to design a tunable device, and four ways of achieving this with a simple beam and attached masses are described and compared in this paper.